25th Anniversary of WOSSPA: Message from the general chair

by Ecole Nationale Polytechnique of Algiers. This is the 25th Anniversary of WoSSPA and it is the first time that WoSSPA is organized in an African country; and, it follows the successful organization of ISSPA 2007 and WoSPA 2008 in Sharjah, UAE. Previous earlier events were all organized in Australia apart from a joint event organized in Malaysia in 2005, starting from a workshop in 1986 that was in preparation for the first ISSPA held in 1987 in Brisbane, Australia. The name of the event was then WoSPA (Worshop on Signal Processing and its Applications). The word " Systems " in the title was added this year. After 1986, the next WoSPA events were held in 1990 and 1992 as two-day workshops that immediately followed ISSPA 1990 and WoSPA 1992, and they were specialized workshops with time-frequency signal analysis as the 1990 theme and Higher Order Spectra as the 1992 theme. From 1993, WoSPA was organized independently of ISSPA and it was held in between two ISSPAs until now. As for all the previous events, we have emphasized some particular themes: biomedical research, signal processing for communications and Radar Signal Processing as well as other multidisciplinary research. The background for this decision is local, taking into account directions taken by Algerian Researchers. With this workshop, we will have now organized three main high level events (including ISSPA 2007 and WoSPA2008 in Sharjah) in the field of Signal Processing in the Middle East & North Africa region. It was found that, in order for universities in the region to make a significant contribution to the field of Signal Processing, we needed to link those areas of expertise available locally with expatriate researchers in overseas universities. To make this link productive, it was desirable to define clear objectives and efficient strategies. Organizing WoSSPA 2011 is part of this strategy. It aims to take advantage of local expertise to define new multidisciplinary research directions that will need to significant innovation for the benefit of the local, Arab, African and international community. In particular, Algerian researchers participating at WoSSPA 2011 should be able to mingle freely with overseas delegates without the hassles involved in trying to get a visa for events organized in an overseas destination. I welcome all the delegates, and especially the international ones, to this event and hope that they will have fruitful discussions, and take time to get familiar with …